[Video] Mobileye’s self-driving car on streets of Jerusalem

A Mobileye car getting ready to drive on the streets of Jerusalem (YouTube screenshot)

Intel Corp. has released a video showing a Mobileye self-driving car navigating the streets of Jerusalem using cameras but no other sensors.

The video was released by Intel, which acquired the Jerusalem-based Mobileye in 2017 for a whopping $15.3 billion, at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where Mobileye also announced two new partnerships, with a South Korean city and a Chinese automaker for the deployment and testing of its autonomous-vehicle technologies.

The unedited video shows the self-driving vehicle navigating intersections, turning into streets with with heavy traffic, changing lanes and stopping for pedestrians. A driver sits behind the steering wheel, which turns by itself to navigate the car.

At the event, Mobileye’s CEO and co-founder Prof. Amnon Shashua talked about the car’s use of camera sensors — the firm’s so-called VIDAR solution — alone, and no other sensors, such as radar and lidar, that are typically used in autonomous vehicle technologies. Shashua also explained how the technology can create 3D models from 2D camera images, and how the technology achieves pixel-level scene segmentation that can be used to detect tiny fragments of “road users” such as wheelchairs or open vehicle doors, Intel said in a statement.

At the event, Mobileye also announced two new partnerships, the first with Daegu, South Korea, to deploy and test robotaxis that use Mobileye’s self-driving systems.

As part of the agreement, Mobileye will integrate its self-driving technologies into vehicles, to enable a driverless mobility-as-a-service operation. Daegu Metropolitan City partners will ensure the regulatory framework to support the establishment of robotaxi fleet operation, the statement said.

Mobileye’s other new agreement is with China’s SAIC Motor Corp., a car manufacturer, to use the firm’s mapping technology on SAIC’s vehicles to gather information on China’s roads, creating a high definition map of the country that can then be used to navigate autonomous cars.

The agreements follow other recent announcements by Mobileye, including: an agreement with RATP in partnership with the city of Paris to bring robotaxis to France; a collaboration with NIO, a Chinese maker of electric vehicles, to manufacture Mobileye’s self-driving system and sell consumer autonomous vehicles based on that system, and to supply robotaxis exclusively to Mobileye for China and other markets; a joint venture with UniGroup in China for use of map data; and a joint venture with Volkswagen and Champion Motors to operate an autonomous ride-hailing fleet in Israel.

Mobileye also said that sales of its systems were close to a record $1 billion in 2019, and are expected to rise to double digits in 2020.

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